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The production is a perfect representation of what’s on offer in the Progress festival, beginning Wednesday at the Theatre Centre. It’s subtitled the International Festival of Performance and Ideas and features works of profound political and social substance, told in theatrically challenging formats.

“Progress is a festival led by a collective desire to collaborate in how we think about performance in Toronto,” says Michael Rubenfeld, the artistic producer of the SummerWorks theatre festival and the man behind Progress.

Toronto’s Why Not Theatre, which is presenting Cine Monstro Feb. 12 to 14, is “interested in the question of diversity in audiences,” says artistic director Ravi Jain. “As diverse as Toronto is, theatre audiences are often homogeneous. Cine Monstro allows us to present Progress’s audiences with a Canadian work through an international lens.”

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MacIvor has never seen the Brazilian version of his play. He’ll see it for the first time in Toronto and will join Diaz onstage after the Feb. 13 performance to discuss the similarities and differences in the two productions.

“I find the idea of international companies presenting works like this incredibly exciting,” MacIvor told the Star. “I’ve had my works done in English with Czech and Israeli surtitles, and I’ve also gone to Japan where they’re done in translation.

“That’s actually really a strange experience. Nobody laughs during a show in Japan because they think it’s impolite. They sit in total silence and you think, ‘None of these jokes are working!’ then they come up you afterwards and say, ‘That was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen!’”

Other works featured as part of Progress include:

Novorossiya: No One’s Land

(Feb. 14): A piece from Ukraine inspired by the experience of its co-creator, Pavel Yurov, of being taken hostage by pro-Russian separatists, beaten, tortured and imprisoned for several months. The story is told in a format that combines verbatim theatre with multiple perspectives.

Marathon

(Feb. 4-6): The Israeli piece is driven by its physicality. Three figures keep running in a circle as they reveal what it’s like to live in Israeli society today. Dance, text and movement ask: Who will survive?

The Messiah Complex

5.0 (Feb. 5): It’s created and performed by Michael Dudeck and curated by Videofag, one of this city’s most vital cutting edge organizations. It’s a multidisciplinary work that generates hybrid images and videos from pop culture, ancient religion, queer theory and many other sources. It’s been described as “a hypnotic, stylized ritual.”

D-Sisyphe

(Feb. 6 and 7): In the work from Tunisia curated by Toronto’s Volcano Theatre, Tunisian actor, playwright, dancer Meher Awachri uses the classic myth of Sisyphus, doomed to repeatedly roll a boulder up a hill, in a movement-driven narrative that offers insights into contemporary Arab society.

Margarete

(Feb. 12-15): This is an intimate performance (16 audience members only) where Polish creator Janek Turkowski has tea with the spectators and builds a story out of a series of 8-mm films he bought in an outdoor Berlin market.

Silent Dinner

(Feb. 7): The Irish/Canadian co-production is an eight-hour event in which 10 people prepare, cook and eat a dinner in complete silence. The artists are a combination of deaf and hearing artists, performers and nonperformers, and children of deaf adults.

Make. Make Public

(Feb 8): In the event curated by Dancemakers people from any artistic background, with any level of experience, are invited to collaborate on a dance-driven creation.

The Republic of Inclusion

(Feb. 15): Alex Bulmer and Sarah Garton Stanley are curating this conversation about the state of inclusion in the theatre community for “all those who are in the theatre world and those who are being left out.” Jess Thom, a writer, artist and “part-time superhero” with Tourette's syndrome, is the keynote speaker.

All events take place at the Theatre Centre, 1115 Queen St. W. Go to www.thisisprogress.ca for information.

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